Word: lavinia
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Michael Sugarman makes a most fitting brother to the emperor, but Abigail Sugarman is not always at ease in the crucial role of the emperor's vengeful wife. Her face and voice do outstanding work for her difficult part, but her gestures and postures float detachedly or rigidly. As Lavinia, daughter to Titus, Susan Howe is intense and haunting. After her famous entrance ("ravished; her hands cut off and her tongue cut out") she is fully successful...
...merely coy and cute and manges to avoid any hint of the sentimental excess into which the character might fall in less capable hands. The Ferrovius of Robert Evans is wonderfully full and strong, yet fully cognizant of the weakness forced upon him by an overactive conscience. The Christian Lavinia, blown first this way and then that by her emotions, is given stature and grace by Laurinda Barrett, in a performance notable for the clarity of its projection of constantly shifting moods and attitudes. Of the others, Louis Edmonds is properly virile in the unrewarding part of the "handsome captain...
...Christians and the Romans comes through in perfect counterpoint to the others: the callous Caesar and the Captain who is in love stand apart from the brawling gladiators; the cowardly and debauched Christian, Spintho, pairs off against the iron Ferrovius as Ferrovius sets off the lovely, if confused, Lavinia. All revolves, however, around the gentle and humanitarian Androcles, and never more clearly than in the touching, though unspoken devotion to Lavinia he shows in the ante-room of the arena--a very neat piece of ensemble staging as well...
...where she ordered a silver tankard for the captain of the ship that had brought her from Sweden. P. T. Barnum was so impressed that he commissioned Tiffany's to design a silver chariot as a wedding present for his two famous midgets, General Tom Thumb and Lavinia Warren...
...picture also elaborates on the romance between the beautiful Christian maiden, Lavinia (Jean Simmons), and the handsome Roman captain (Victor Mature). The acting styles range all the way from the theatricalism of Maurice Evans as a simpering Caesar to Mature's deadpanning. As the lion-taming hero, TV Actor Alan Young appears imbecilic rather than amiable. Jean Simmons makes a beguiling Lavinia, while Robert Newton tears ferociously into the role of the Christian warrior, Ferrovius. But this screen adaptation of a Shavian classic succeeds mostly in throwing G.B.S. to the lions...